Saturday, May 30, 2009

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird [1960], Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus.

Friday, May 29, 2009

I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den —As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,Or in what other land they hap to be —Which drives the belly close beneath the chin :My beard turns up to heaven ; my nape falls in,Fixed on my spine : my breast-bone visiblyGrows like a harp : a rich embroideryBedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.My loins into my paunch like levers grind :My buttock like a crupper bears my weight ;My feet unguided wander to and fro ;In front my skin grows loose and long ; behind,By bending it becomes more taut and strait ;Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow :Whence false and quaint, I know,Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye ;For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

"Cigars, scotch whisky, cognac, champagne from 7am to 3am." One of his valets, Roy Howells, wrote in his book, Simply Churchill, "It took me a little while to get used to the fact that in two days his cigar consumption was the equivalent of my weekly salary." Source here.

"[In 1629, John Winthrop's] Massachusetts Bay Colony created its Great Seal. It depicted an Indian with a scroll coming out of his mouth. On that scroll are the words 'Come over and help us.' The British colonists were thus pictured as benevolent humanists, responding to the pleas of the miserable natives to be rescued from their bitter pagan fate."

When I was quite a young man I dove into the rock-n-roll life head first and when I emerged I couldn't recognize myself so much. Not physically. I had lost some of my moral bearings. Only moments before I had stood off to the side of such debauchery like a disapproving little prude.

Rufus Wainwright

A songwriter needs to go to the dark side. It's necessary to put yourself in harm's way. And it's a great challenge to come back. The challenge is not to stay there. You go to the next level when you redeem yourself.

The Atlantic Monthly writer James Fallows spent a year in China watching that manufacturing juggernaut up close, and he provides a persuasive explanation—one well understood by Chinese businessmen—of how outsourcing has strengthened American competitiveness. Most Americans, even management experts, have not heard of the "smiley curve." But Chinese manufacturers know it well. Named for the U-shaped smile on the simple 1970s cartoon of a happy face, ☺, the curve illustrates the development of a product, from conception to sale. At the top left of the curve one starts with the idea and high-level industrial design—how the product will look and work. Lower down on the curve comes the detailed engineering plan. At the bottom of the U is the actual manufacturing, assembly, and shipping. Then rising up on the right of the curve are distribution, marketing, retail sales, service contracts, and sales of parts and accessories. Fallows observes that, in almost all manufacturing, China takes care of the bottom of the curve and America the top—the two ends of the U—which is where the money is. "The simple way to put this—that the real money is in the brand name, plus retail—may sound obvious," he writes, "but its implications are illuminating." A vivid example of this is the iPod: it is manufactured solely outside the United States, but the majority of valued added is captured by Apple, Inc. in California. The company made $80 is gross profit on a 30-gigabyte video iPod that retailed [in late 2007] for $299. Its profit was 36 percent of the estimated wholesale price of $224. [Add that to the retail profit if it was sold in an Apple store.] The total cost of parts was $144. Chinese manufacturers, by contrast, have margins of a few percent on their products.

"Largely in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is building six new subway lines, a 43-kilometer light-rail system, a new airport terminal [the world's largest of course], 25 million square kilometers of property, a 125-kilometer 'green belt,' and a 12-square-kilometer Olympic Park. When looking at the models of a new Beijing, one inevitably thinks of Albert Speer's grandiose plans for postwar Berlin, drawn up in the 1940s; in fact, Albert Speer Jr., the son, also an architect, designed the 8-kilometer boulevard that will run from the Forbidden Palace to the Olympic Park. He sees no real comparison between the transformation of Bejing and his father's designs for Hitler. This is 'bigger,' he says. 'Much bigger.'"

In 1492, as everybody knows, Christopher Columbus set sail on one of the most ambitious expeditions in human history. What is less well known is that eighty-seven years earlier a Chinese admiral named Zheng He began the first of seven equally ambitious expeditions. Zheng's ships were much bigger and better constructed than those of Columbus, or Vasco da Gama, or any of Europe's other great fifteenth and sixteenth-century seafarers. On his first trip, in 1405, he took 317 vessels and 28,000 men, compared with Columbus' 4 boats and 150 sailors. The largest vessels in the Chinese fleet, the "treasure ships," were over four hundred feet—more than four times the length of Columbus' flagship, Santa Maria—and had nine masts. Each required so much wood that three hundred acres of forest were felled to build a single one. There were ships designed to carry horses, supplies, food, water, and, of course, troops. The smallest vessel in Zheng's flotilla, a highly maneuverable five-masted warship, was still twice as large as the legendary Spanish galleon.

The Chinese ships were constructed with special woods, intricate joints, sophisticated waterproofing techniques, and an adjustable centerboard keel. The treasure ship had large, luxurious cabins, silk sails, and windowed halls. All were constructed on dry docks in Nanjing, the word's largest and most advanced shipbuilding port. In the three years after 1405, 1,681 ships were built of refitted at Nanjing. Nothing remotely comparable could have happened in Europe at the time.

Size matters. These massive fleets were meant to "shock and awe" the inhabitants of the surrounding area, making clear the power and reach of the Ming dynasty. On his seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, Zheng traveled widely through the waters of the Indian Ocean and around Southeast Asia. He gave gifts to the natives and accepted tributes. When encountering opposition, he did not hesitate to use military might. On one voyage, he brought back a captured Sumatran pirate; on another, a rebellious chief from Ceylon. He returned from all of them with flowers, fruits, precious stones, and exotic animals, including giraffes and zebras for the imperial zoo.

But Zheng's story ends oddly. By the 1430s, a new emperor had come to power. He abruptly ended the imperial expeditions and turned his back on trade and exploration. Some officials tried to keep the tradition going, but to no avail. In 1500, the court decreed that anyone who built a ship with more than two masts [the size required to go any distance at sea] would be executed. In 1525, coastal authorities were ordered to destroy any oceangoing vessels they encountered and throw the owner in prison. In 1551, it became a crime to go to sea on a multimast ship for any purpose. When the Qing dynasty came to power in 1644, it continued this basic policy, but it had less faith in decrees: instead, it simply scorched a 700-mile-long strip of China's southern coast, rendering it uninhabitable. These measures had the desired effect: China's shipping industry collapsed. In the decades after Zheng's last voyage, dozens of Western explorers travelled to the waters around India and China. But it took three hundred years for a Chinese vessel to make its way to Europe—on a visit to London for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

"The young god is peering at us from over his glass of wine. Wine is the symbol of his power, and its surface ripples with movement as he offers it in his outstretched hand...He is no traditional god. From his drunken red cheeks, dark hands and dirty fingernails, to the sensual intent of the eyes and lips, he is a very worldly god, human even. [The model is taken to be a male prostitute.] The incredibly frank earthiness is one of Caravaggio's greatest innovations and achievements."

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

First William the NormanThen William his sonHenry, Stephen, HenryThen Richard and JohnNext Henry the ThirdEdwards One, Two and ThreeAnd again after RichardThree Henrys we seeTwo Edwards, Third RichardIf rightly I guessTwo Henrys, Sixth EdwardQueen Mary, Queen BessThen Jamie the ScotsmanThen Charles whom they slewYet received after CromwellAnother Charles too.Next James the SecondAcceded the ThroneThen good William and MaryTogether came onNot till Anne, Georges FourAnd Fourth William all passedCame the reign of VictoriaWhose longest did lastThen Edward the Peacemaker(He was her son)The fifth of the GeorgesWas next in the runEdward the EighthGave the Crown to his brotherNow God's sent ElizabethAll of us love her.

19th century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus [1850-1909] developed the "Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting." It revealed that the average person immediately forgets 56 percent of new material learned. Within one day, the percentage climbs to 66. Within one month, we've lost 80 percent of what we've learned.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Curtis's photographs of American Indians have become iconic images of what many believed at the time to be a vanishing race. In 1906, Curtis was offered $75,000 to produce a 20-volume study of the Indians of North America by JP Morgan. The 20 volumes were to contain 1,500 photogravures. Curtis produced 40,000 photographs and 10,000 wax cylinders of recorded music and stories from over 80 tribes.

Geronimo was a symbol of untamed freedom of the American West. The Apaches were the last Indians to surrender. "No one was their friends except their legs." At one time they ran 80 miles a day to elude American forces.

In 1905, an 80-year-old Geronimo led President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural procession.